Mintrocket’s director is delighted to bring Like a Dragon’s Ichiban into Dave the Diver, ‘It’s been a dream of mine to invite these iconic characters into Dave’s world’

Normally I feel about brand crossovers the same way I feel about poutine. Gravy and chips are both wonderful things when eaten separately, but combine them and you end up with a soggy mush that loses all sense of texture. But I’m willing to give Dave the Diver’s latest Like a Dragon DLC crossover a pass, because the story behind it is really rather sweet. The latest DLC for Mintrocket’s wildly successful aquatic adventure brings Like a Dragon’s Ichiban and several other characters and minigames from the series into Dave the Diver.

I’ll belly flop into the details shortly. But I was mainly struck by the words of Jaeho Hwang, Dave the Diver’s director, when introducing the DLC on the PlayStation blog. “As some of you may already know, I’ve often cited the Like a Dragon series as one of my greatest gaming inspirations,” he writes. “From the original 2005 release to the latest RPG iterations, I’ve been captivated by the rich character development and genre-defying gameplay. It’s been a dream of mine to invite these iconic characters into Dave’s world, and now, that dream is becoming a reality.”

Now, taken on its own, this could all be interpreted as superficial marketing bluster. But a cursory Google brought up a LinkedIn post in which Hwang discusses meeting Like a Dragon’s head honcho Masayoshi Yokoyama. Hwang writes that he “screamed like a K-pop fanboy” when he saw Yokoyama and “got his autograph on the dialogue book of the very first game I have kept since 2005.” He also reiterates that Like a Dragon is “one of the biggest” inspirations for Dave the Diver. So I think it’s fair to say his enthusiasm is legit.

In short, it’s all rather wholesome as brand crossovers go. The Like a Dragon DLC sees Ichiban and the Bartender from the Survive Bar taking a break at the Blue Hole, when they stumble upon a “sinister plot” that involves a dolphin-poaching syndicate, which our trusty Dave helps them unravel. The DLC adds a beat ’em up style infiltration mission where Ichiban and an ex-arms dealer called Cobra infiltrate the poachers’ hideout, while you can also “cheer along with Ichiban’s unforgettable karaoke performances” and hire various other Like a Dragon characters to work in your restaurant as staff.

Ichiban will arrive in Dave the Diver’s restaurant at some point in April. This isn’t the first time Dave has crossed paths with other video game characters. Dave himself turned up in Balatro last year, while before that some spooky cultists from Dredge paid a surprise visit to the Blue Hole. Yet even without all this brand based gubbins, Dave the Diver is still an excellent time, with Chris Livingston calling it “the biggest surprise of 2023 and hands-down my favorite game of the year so far” in his review.